--This is without example.
These three facts, I think, are certain, and would have been nearly so,
if the Gospels had never been written. The Christian story, as to these
points, hath never varied. No other hath been set up against it. Every
letter, every discourse, every controversy, amongst the followers of the
religion; every book written by them from the age of its commencement to
the present time, in every part of the world in which it hath been
professed, and with every sect into which it hath been divided (and we
have letters and discourses written by contemporaries, by witnesses of
the transaction, by persons themselves bearing a share in it, and other
writings following that again regular succession), concur in
representing these facts in this manner. A religion which now possesses
the greatest part of the civilised world unquestionably sprang up at
Jerusalem at this time. Some account must be given of its origin; some
cause assigned for its rise. All the accounts of this origin, all the
explications of this cause, whether taken from the writings of the early
followers of the religion (in which, and in which perhaps alone, it
could he expected that they should he distinctly unfolded), or from
occasional notices in other writings of that or the adjoining age,
either expressly allege the facts above stated as the means by which the
religion was set up, or advert to its commencement in a manner which
agrees with the supposition of these facts being true, and which
testifies their operation and effects.
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